Abstract: In this paper, based on the assumption that after-class work in an exercise-based course accompanied by group work is done on an online threaded bulletin board system, the authors propose a support tool for the instructors. Specifically, while focusing on the factors that compose a discussion on the online bulletin board, the users who comment, the topics, and the items (keywords) to be discussed, the authors try to visualize the relationships among these factors as network diagrams. The authors also propose indexes, the comment degree and the activation degree, to evaluate communities formed there. Our experiments in which group work was actually implemented with the application of the proposed tool demonstrated that use of the network diagrams and the evaluation indexes served to distinguish the differences between those groups with properly-proceeding discussions and those without such discussions. The authors confirmed that this can enable the instructors to easily discover those students who do not participate in the discussion and groups with sluggish discussions.

Kohei Otake, Yoshihisa Shinozawa and Tomofumi Uetake, “Proposal of the Support Tool for After-Class Work based on the Online Threaded Bulletin Board” International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications(IJACSA), 8(2), 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.14569/IJACSA.2017.080229

@article{Otake2017,
title = {Proposal of the Support Tool for After-Class Work based on the Online Threaded Bulletin Board},
journal = {International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications},
doi = {10.14569/IJACSA.2017.080229},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.14569/IJACSA.2017.080229},
year = {2017},
publisher = {The Science and Information Organization},
volume = {8},
number = {2},
author = {Kohei Otake and Yoshihisa Shinozawa and Tomofumi Uetake}
}